After the Swell Subsides
by ThereIsAlwaysAnotherMonster
Summary: A missing scene from after And Straight On Til Morning, in which Belle wanders and contemplates. Heavily Rumbelle-centric. Please leave a review if you enjoyed!


As Hook's ship disappears into the cavernous abyss in the water, Belle feels as if it drags her heart along with it.

Because in a matter of speaking, it is. Rumplestiltskin is her other half, her soul mate, her true love, and now he's gone from her yet again, after they've only just been reunited. It doesn't seem fair, she thinks. For the world to allow them to touch, to kiss, so briefly before tearing them apart again like waves against a ship's hull. What makes it infinitely worse is the very real possibility that she will never see him again, and that thought tugs painfully at her heart and forces still more tears into her eyes.

Because now all she's left with is a tiny scroll tied with red ribbon, and the taste of his lips still lingering on hers.

Belle's feet drag like lead as she forces herself away from the pier, finally wrenches her gaze from the spot in the water he'd disappeared into. Her lip is still trembling, much to her frustration; she'd much rather be the strong one. But unfortunately while her bravery had led her to fight Hook, and even to 'slay' the Yaoguai, things become vastly more complicated when it comes to matters involving her heart.

As she trudges through Storybrooke alone, Belle suppresses a strange, leftover Lacey urge to drown her sorrows at the Rabbit Hole, instead choosing to wander towards her beautiful old library, neglected under her curse. She fits the key into the lock and pushes the door open, inhaling that lovely musty book smell that she adores. Once inside, her legs give way and she simply sinks against the door, slamming it shut with her back and scrunching her eyes closed.

Her hand searches through the pockets of her coat for her phone, and she unlocks it and scans through her contacts before her eyes settle upon the entry labelled _Ruby. _Yes, Ruby would know what to do. She's one of the few people here that understands and even accepts her relationship with the town pawnbroker. As she goes to hit dial, a lump rises in her throat at the name beneath her friend's:

_Rumple. _

With a stupid little girlish love heart after it and everything.

Belle takes a deep breath and tears her eyes from the name and back up to Ruby's. But just as her thumb hovers over the small green icon of a telephone, she hears movement in the back corner of the library. Her blood runs cold.

"Who's there?" she calls reflexively, afterward mentally chastising herself for making the idiotic mistake. A book falls from the topmost shelf and lands with a _clatter _on the ground, making her jump slightly. She goes to pick it up, noticing that it's a battered old copy of _Little Red Riding Hood. _Belle's heart rate slows. _"Ruby."_

Her friend pokes her brunette head out from behind the shelves and Belle sighs in irritation.

"You scared the hell out of me!" she chastises. Ruby merely smiles a wolfish grin and emerges from the rows of books.

"Sorry. It was funnier in my head, I spose. I just heard through the grapevine that you were _you _again and I guess I wanted to give you a kind of… 'Welcome Home' party?"

Ruby shrugs, before noticing the tear tracks on her friend's cheeks. Her face immediately wrinkles in concern and she hastily approaches the much shorter girl.

"Oh honey, what happened?" she asks, wiping a few stray tears off Belle's skin.

"Can I stay with you tonight?" is all Belle is able to muster in return, her voice quivering. "I'll… explain on the way." Her friend is nodding before she's even finished the sentence, and all of a sudden the girl's arm is wrapped tightly around her shoulders and she's being escorted outside and towards her car. Ruby smells like cherries and orchids, and the pleasant scent pervades her nostrils.

Rumple always smelled like books and leather and _home._

The difference is jarring.

* * *

Belle should have known that going to Ruby for a shoulder to cry on would result in her being swaddled in soft blankets and practically force-fed mugs of Granny's hot cocoa. But it still makes her smile a little inwardly, and the drink creates a warm and cosy feeling inside her stomach that is a welcome replacement for the hollow churning she's been feeling for the past few hours.

"I can't believe they all just _left," _Ruby is saying, pacing her room like, well, a dog. "And that they didn't take me with them!" Belle shoots her a look. "Or… y'know, you." Ruby amends. "It doesn't make sense."

"And once _this _spell," Belle pulls out the little scroll, "Is activated, there's a very likely chance that we'll never see them again." She wraps her arms around her knees, making herself into a tiny blanketed ball perched on the edge of Ruby's bed. Her friend stops pacing in realization.

"I'll never see Snow again," she exhales, staring at her wall. Her eyes lose focus and go misty, and for a few moments she says nothing.

"I'll never see Rumple again," Belle breathes, a painful knot in her throat. This seems to snap Ruby out of her trance, and the girl is by her side before she can blink.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry, Belle. I'm being selfish. He's your true love and everything… It must be killing you to be away from him."

Belle simply nods in response, not feeling like elaborating at the moment. She twirls the red-ribboned scroll between her fingers, yearning to open it yet simultaneously not daring to.

"We'll get them back somehow," Ruby states definitively. "We always do. Good always wins, remember?" Her hand comes to rest on Belle's back, rubbing in soothing circular motions.

"I'd like to think so," Belle finally says, brushing a brunette curl behind her ear. "Because I miss him so much already, and it's barely been a few hours." She chuckles a little through her tears. "The last few months… I remember them all, but it's like I wasn't actually there with him. Like it wasn't really _me. _It feels so distant, like a memory or a dream."

"Like how our cursed identities feel," Ruby nods. "They're you, but somehow they're not. Only yours would be worse because it was fake, engineered by Regina." Belle's lip twitches in response.

They're silent for a few moments, curled up on Ruby's bed and simply appreciating each other's presence.

"Will you tell me about him?" Ruby speaks suddenly.

Belle blinks.

"What?"

"About Gold. We've… well we've all seen the pawnbroker, the rent collector, even the Dark One. But being his true love, you're lucky enough to see a whole different side of him_._ Tell me about how he is, when he's with _you."_ Ruby's looking at her now and she can see the seriousness in her eyes. Belle bites her bottom lip in thought before deciding to indulge her friend, if only for a little while.

"Well he's uh…" she begins uncertainly. "He's sweet. Softer, vulnerable even. He never fails to make me breakfast in the morning, and he has a way of remembering every tiny detail of the way I like things. He makes out like it's not a big deal, but I know he does it because he likes to make me smile." The ghost of a grin tugs at the edges of Belle's lips and her eyes flick over to her friend, who's clearly enraptured.

"He knows how much I love books; in fact he's the one that organized the library here in Storybrooke for me. He gave me one back in his castle in the Enchanted Forest as well. He actually likes to read himself, you know? But nowhere near as much as me. Sometimes I'd be cleaning the castle windows and he'd be curled up in an armchair in the corner with his head in a book, but I'd never be able to see what he was reading."

She knows she's rambling by now, but she can't really bring herself to care.

"Sometimes if I'm really persuasive I can get him to tell me secrets he keeps. It's hard because he's such a guarded person, but when he lets you in…" Belle pauses and chews vaguely at the corner of her lip, her eyes misting a little again. "You just feel like you're the luckiest person in the world, to have him share that bit of his soul with you. And during those moments, you can see beneath the beast that everyone sees, to the man he truly is. One with goodness in his heart."

Now when Belle's eyes meet Ruby's, she's slightly apprehensive of her friend's reaction. But she finds a gentle smile gracing her features, and softness in her gaze.

For a while, she doesn't say anything. And then-

"Is he a good kisser?"

"_Ruby!" _Belle exclaims in outrage, a blush forming on her cheeks. Ruby holds up her hands in surrender and bounds off the bed with a grin.

"Too far?" she questions, amused. "I'll go make more cocoa."

"Uh-huh," Belle retorts with a smile, watching her friend scurry down the stairs. Now left alone, she fingers the rolled up paper before gently loosening the shiny red ribbon binding it.

She might've imagined it, but she thinks her hands tremble as she unrolls the note.

At the top of the scroll is the enchantment for the town written in Rumplestiltskin's untidy and familiar scrawl, but Belle's eyes scan straight over it and down to the bottom, where there appears to be a note written for her.

_My darling Belle,_

_You've no idea the strength it took me to leave you, especially after only just getting you back. But in the end, your safety matters so much more to me than my own happiness. I'd gladly suffer through a lifetime of the torture of not being with you, if it means you are safe from harm._

_Please take care of yourself. You know I love you, more than anything in this world and every world beyond it. I always will._

_Rumplestiltskin_

By the time she's reached the end of the note, her face is wet once again. God, she's sick of crying. She's never done this much in her life.

Belle studies the note, the loops and lines and traits of Rumple's handwriting. And she re-reads the message over and over again, trying to make sense of what's going on around her right now. All it does is convince her of one thing:

That there's no way this spell is going to be cast on Storybrooke.

There was once a time when Belle had sworn to always fight for her Rumplestiltskin, _always _fight for him. What makes now any different? Why should she back down, give up, give in?

She shouldn't. No, they'll find another way to protect the town, one that when they're ready, will allow everyone's loved ones to come home. This time, she'll have to go against Rumple's wishes, but hey, it's a price she's more than willing to pay if it means seeing him again.

Ruby re-enters the room clutching two steaming mugs of cocoa and her face narrows into suspicion at what Belle assumes must be a determined and defiant expression on her own features.

"You have a plan, don't you?" Ruby questions.

"Not exactly. But I do know one thing," Belle shakes the blankets off of her and heads toward the fireplace in Ruby's bedroom. She holds up the scroll, before throwing it into the fire, watching the flames lick at the parchment and turn it curled and black. "It doesn't involve this."

A grin spreads over Ruby's face.

"I like the sounds of this plan."

Belle smiles softly at her friend, and watches her thoughts drift far away in her eyes, most likely to Snow.

"We'll bring them home, Ruby," Belle says finally. "I promise."


End file.
